When character is lost, everything is lost

The present-day world appears to be running fast towards destruction.
As per Indian scriptural evidence, the conditioned souls are enveloped by Lord’s illusory energy consisting of three primal qualities— Sattva, Rajah, and Tamah. ‘Tamah’ indicates tendency to commit vice or to inflict injury. In fact, tamah tendency has now engulfed the whole world and is spreading over like fire and showing its most monstrous destructive ugly appearance.

By Rajah-guna living beings are created, by Sattva-guna they are maintained and by Tama-guna they are destroyed. Living beings are non-eternal. Human beings are the best amongst all kinds of created species, because they have got the discriminating power between good and bad, eternal and non-eternal, vice and virtue. Eating, sleeping, defending and mating are equal in beasts and human beings but human beings are superior because of their discriminating power. Practically it is demonstrated now that the human beings have become the greatest enemy of their own species. They are causing unnatural deaths without considering the innocence of the killed— whether they are children or women, whom the killers have never seen and who have never done any harm to the killers. It is the greatest shame of such human beings to claim the false vanity of being the best amongst created beings.

The Supreme Lord does not think much about sins of other living beings who have got no such discriminating power. They do actions out of instinct. But God has bestowed discriminating power to human beings. In spite of that if they commit heinous crimes, surely they will be punished. They will never be spared. They are lowering the status of humanity. We may commit heinous crimes by deceiving ignorant human beings, beasts and birds, but we cannot deceive Supreme Lord Who is Omniscient. Lord is residing in the heart of every individual soul.

‘Karmanye va dhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana’ —Bhagvad Gita

As human being has got relative independence, he can do good and bad deeds by good or bad use of his relative independence. But the fruits of those deeds are controlled by Supreme Lord and not by conditioned souls of the world. Out of ignorance, conditioned souls always have the aptitude to blame others for their sufferings.

When human beings have lost the capacity to understand difference between civilization and non-civilization, good and bad, they have lost everything. There is one pithy saying to know the criterion to understand which is good and bad, beneficial and non-beneficial— ‘When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; and when character is lost, everything is lost.’

— His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Goswami Maharaj

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